But blest the wanderer whose enthusiast mind Each muse of ancient days hath deep imbued With lofty lore, and all his thoughts refined In the calm school of silent solitude; Pour’d on his ear, midst groves and glens retired, The mighty strains of each illustrious clime, All that hath lived, while empires have expired, To float for ever on the winds of time; And on his soul indelibly portray’d Fair visionary forms, to fill each classic shade. IV. Is not this mind, to meaner thoughts unknown, A sanctuary of beauty and of light? There he may dwell in regions all his own, A world of dreams, where all is pure and bright. For him the scenes of old renown possess Romantic charms, all veil’d from other eyes; There every form of nature’s loveliness Wakes in his breast a thousand sympathies; As music’s voice, in some lone mountain dell, From rocks and caves around calls forth each echo’s swell. V. For him Italia’s brilliant skies illume The bard’s lone haunts, the warrior’s combat-plains, And the wild rose yet lives to breath and bloom Round Doric Pæstum’s solitary fanes.[12] But most, fair Greece! on thy majestic shore He feels the fervours of his spirit rise; Thou birth-place of the Muse! whose voice of yore Breathed in thy groves immortal harmonies; And lingers still around the well-known coast, Murmuring a wild farewell to fame and freedom lost. VI. By seas that flow in brightness as they lave Thy rocks, th’ enthusiast rapt in thought may stray, While roves his eye o’er that deserted wave, Once the proud scene of battle’s dread array. --O ye blue waters! ye, of old that bore The free, the conquering, hymn’d by choral strains, How sleep ye now around the silent shore, The lonely realm of ruins and of chains! How are the mighty vanish’d in their pride! E’en as their barks have left no traces on your tide. VII. Hush’d are the Pæans whose exulting tone Swell’d o’er that tide[13]--the sons of battle sleep-- The wind’s wild sigh, the halcyon’s voice alone Blend with the plaintive murmur of the deep. Yet when those waves have caught the splendid hues Of morn’s rich firmament, serenely bright, Or setting suns the lovely shore suffuse With all their purple mellowness of light, Oh! who could view the scene, so calmly fair, Nor dream that peace, and joy, and liberty were there? VIII.